The seasonally adjusted rate shows a much smaller decline, from 3.97% in November to 3.38% in December. The average for 2003, cited by both Fox and Abascal for their comparisons, was 3.25%, up from 2.71% in 2002 -- and the highest rate in the last six years. The official comparisons are misleading, as Mexico counts as unemployed only those who did not work a single hour in the week of the employment survey.
The official statistical institute, Inegi, does provide a more comprehensive set of data that does not cast Mexico in as favourable a light as official rhetoric. Last year averages show that, apart from the 3.25% considered unemployed, 25.8% of the economically active population worked without social security cover (1.4% more that in 2002) and 11.92% earned less than the US$4 minimum daily wage (7% more than in 2002). In 2003, 34,790 jobs were lost in the formal sector, taking the total lost since Fox took office up to 355,476. The best estimates for recovery this year envisage the creation of some 350,000 formal jobs, which would fall just shy of offsetting the losses of the past few years, but would fail to provide for new entrants to the labour market in that period.
TRADE | Oil price helps the balance. Mexico's trade deficit shrank last year by 29%, to US$5.62bn. This was overwhelmingly attributable to the improvement in world oil prices, which boosted oil export earning by 28.7%: non-oil exports increased by only 0.3%, so total exports earnings rose by 2.8%, to US$165.33bn. Export expansion thus outstripped the increase in imports spending, which was up only 1.3% (as a result of the scant domestic economic activity) to US$171bn.
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